It's just a game outside of the smooth standard. Many things were great, but so much stuff stuck in the 80s (year not score).

I'd say i loved some of the first hours, enough to overcome the next dozens of hours were i was kind of annoyed, then started to like it again better as soon as i started to play it as a grinder, liked the new easiness when playing NG+, since it was with Tendencies towards easy, hated the difficulty in NG++, since it had Tendencies set on hardest, liked again NG+++ although the last 10 hours were actually really just for the last trophies.

I guess i share the love so many players have for this game for the very same reasons but i also hate so much stuff nobody of the same group seems to care for. It's really one of the very few if not the only one were my opinion is split half in love and half in hate.
Enough hate to never touch Dark Souls or any direct spiritual successor, enough love to hope for a similar game, like eg. Dragon's Dogma, to be what DS did actually not want to be.